I'm investigating slow DNS responses on Ubuntu, I have installed bind9 to improve times from local cache, but still something is odd. What could make dig wait for 10 seconds and say that query time took 0?

The status is SERVFAIL, it looks like something is wrong with your DNS server (it doesn't return anything), and 10 seconds is just dig's timeout.
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Chris DownFeb 17 '14 at 19:29

@ChrisDown thanks for pointing this out. I would accept this as an answer. 0 msec is misleading.
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RumcaFeb 17 '14 at 20:04

Ubuntu has been shipping dnsmasq and uses it by default, which already gives you a caching name server. I don't think there is anything to be gained by adding another one.
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BananguinFeb 17 '14 at 20:37

@Rumca Sure thing, I added it as an answer.
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Chris DownFeb 18 '14 at 2:44